28 THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS 



tianity. Those, therefore, who build arguments 

 as to the needlessness of religion on the foundation 

 that persons without any belief in God do exhibit 

 all the moral virtues, build on sand. At any rate 

 the answer to the question which we are discussing 

 is not to be found in this direction. 



Others again will perhaps maintain the thesis 

 that fashion has a great deal to do with this. It 

 is not fashionable to believe in God, or at least it 

 was not. It was highly fashionable to call one- 

 self an agnostic ; perhaps it is not quite so much 

 the vogue now as it was. No doubt there is 

 something in this, though not very much. It is 

 much easier to go with the tide than against it, 

 and there are scientific tides as truly as there are 

 tides in the fashion of dress. There was a Weis- 

 mann tide, now nearly at dead water ; there was 

 an anti-vitalistic tide, now ebbing fast. When 

 these were in full flow it was a hazardous thing 

 for a young man who had to make his own way 

 in the scientific world to swim against either or 

 both of them. Fashions change, and fashion is 

 not so set against the idea of a God as it was. 

 The materialistic tide is " going out," and we 

 shall see that there is some truth in the view 

 which holds that the incoming tide is largely 

 that of occultism, a thing disliked and despised 

 and indeed with some reason by the materialistic 

 school even more than it dislikes and despises 

 theistic opinions. 



Fashion, however, is not in any way a complete 

 answer to the question we are proposing to our- 

 selves, nor is the unquestionable fact that scientific 



